Testing

Chrome Extension For Load Testing Tool

Load Impact has released a new Google Chrome extension designed to let developers create user session recordings for load testing websites, apps, and APIs.

The tool works with "just a couple of clicks" inside the open browser tab instead of from an account dashboard. This stress-testing makes it possible to see the performance impact on a website, app, or API, as the number of users (and their number of geographic locations) are increased.

The test results allow developers to anticipate when their work will fail and, in theory, to fix bottlenecks before they impact users.

"Until now our session recorder required developers to go to our website and manually change the proxy settings in the browser or operating system to perform a recording," said Ragnar Lönn, Load Impact founder and CEO. "That was a bit of a hassle, and the proxy solution sometimes caused problems with SSL certificates. Our new Chrome extension now automates the entire process from recording traffic in a specific browser tab, to stopping, saving, and sending the scrip to their Load Impact account for future use."

Most developers want to run multiple, different user session scripts simultaneously because not all users are doing the same things as the same time. With Load Impact, developers can run up to 10 different users' scenarios in each load test, simulating up to 100,000 concurrent users.

"We capture everything — every single thing being loaded into the browser as the user clicks — including ads, style sheets, Java scripts, images — everything, so you get a far more accurate read of what's going on,” said Lönn.

Load Impact offers an On-Demand service for performance testing, and recently began accepting applications for early access to the new Load Impact Continuous Delivery service, which allows developers to make stress testing an integrated part of their continuous delivery process.

Dr. Dobb's encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task.
However, Dr. Dobb's moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing or spam. Dr. Dobb's further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Video

This month's Dr. Dobb's Journal

This month,
Dr. Dobb's Journal is devoted to mobile programming. We introduce you to Apple's new Swift programming language, discuss the perils of being the third-most-popular mobile platform, revisit SQLite on Android
, and much more!